In her debut blog, Asha Ladwa discusses a secondary analysis of data from the ANTLER trial, which investigated the clinical factors associated with relapse in primary care patients on long-term maintenance antidepressants.
[read the full story...]Optimal antipsychotic dosing in first-episode schizophrenia: how much is too little, too much, or just right?
Joe Pierre reports on the first published study exploring the relationship between antipsychotic dose and risk of relapse in first episode schizophrenia, which suggests that standard antipsychotic dosing is best for relapse prevention.
[read the full story...]Lamotrigine in the maintenance treatment of bipolar disorder
Michael Ostacher critically appraises and summarises a recent Cochrane systematic review, which presents the latest best evidence on the efficacy of lamotrigine in the maintenance treatment of bipolar disorder.
[read the full story...]How consistent are international treatment guidelines for bipolar disorder?
Steven Marwaha publishes his debut blog on a review article that asks if there is consensus across international evidence-based guidelines for the management of bipolar disorder.
[read the full story...]Depot antipsychotics: If you pay me, you can keep injecting me
John Baker looks at the 2-year follow-up results of a cluster RCT on the effectiveness of financial incentives to improve adherence to maintenance treatment with depot antipsychotics.
[read the full story...]Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy cannot substitute maintenance antidepressants for preventing depression relapse
Ioana Cristea takes a closer look at a recent non-inferiority RCT, which compares mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) plus discontinued antidepressants versus MBCT and maintenance antidepressants.
[read the full story...]Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy to prevent depression
André Tomlin presents the results of the PREVENT RCT published today in The Lancet, which investigates the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy compared with maintenance antidepressant treatment in the prevention of depressive relapse or recurrence.
[read the full story...]Medication for the maintenance treatment of bipolar disorder
Elena Marcus summarises a recent network meta-analysis published in The Lancet of the comparative efficacy and tolerability of medication for the maintenance treatment of bipolar disorder.
[read the full story...]How does buprenorphine fair as an alternative to methadone for treating opioid dependence?
Meg Fluharty summarises a recent Cochrane review, which tells us that high-dose buprenorphine is an effective maintenance treatment for heroin compared to placebo, but fixed flexible-dosing methadone is superior to buprenorphine at participant retention.
[read the full story...]Extended therapy with varenicline reduces rates of smoking relapse in people with serious mental health issues
People with serious mental health issues such as schizophrenia have higher rates of cigarette smoking than the general population, with estimates suggesting more than 50% are current smokers. When people in this population do manage to quit during treatment we then see particularly high rates of relapse after treatment ends. A new randomised control trial (Evins [read the full story…]